Various systems have been developed to simplify musical notation in attempts to assist students to translate the notation into musical performance. U.S. Pat. No. 391,887 issued to Fallon incorporates consonants to identify sounds of the notes, dots, and rests, while the vowels designate the life of the consonants, that is, the duration of or value of the sound or note. The 12 chromatic sounds of an octave are represented by the 12 consonants B, D, F, G, Y, L, Ch, N, V, R, S, and T, in the order given. Application of the different alphabetical characters in writing a piece of music is as follows: the respective characters designating the tones of the music and the duration are written on a real or imaginary straight horizontal line from left to right. Consonants or notes receive their duration by writing the respective vowels alongside of the consonant.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,132 issued to Hale, is directed to a method and apparatus for teaching musical notation to young children. Each note is associated with a distinctly identifiable color, which is in turn associated with an object that naturally occurs in this color. Each object, in turn, is associated with a cartoon character by color, the first letter of the name and the shape. Each character is endowed with a distinctly identifiable personality characteristic that enables the child to utilize the cartoon character in an educational activity. U.S. Pat. No. 682,015, issued to Adams is a simplified notation for musical tones employing a three line staff for a more compact arrangement and using conventional notes with strike through lines to indicate relative pitch on the abbreviated staff. This system uses conventional note types (full, half, quarter, etc.) to indicate relative timing of tones.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,277,090 issued to Lust uses a composite musical staff of at least two sets of five equally spaced lines each, the two sets of lines forming a composite treble-bass clef staff. Conventional notation is used with this composite staff, designed to simplify orchestral scoring. U.S. Pat. No. 5,574,238 issued to Mencher is a simplified method of musical notation for keyboard instruments designed to enable easier sight-reading and playing of music. Each octave is represented by five lines, each of a different color, to match color tags of the corresponding five black keys of each octave of the keyboard. Each of the lines represents a half-tone and each space on either side of the lines represents a whole tone of an octave on a keyboard.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,982,115 issued to Johnston is directed to a music notation system that utilizes a grid with vertical columns representing musical notes and horizontal rows representing time intervals. This invention is a keyboard-based music notation system that corresponds to the conventional piano keyboard and thus directly related to the disclosure material that you provided. Heavy horizontal lines are used to indicate the beginning and end of bars or measures such as rhythmic groupings while the note symbol may be extended to indicate that that particular note is to be held for more than one time duration period. The shape of the note symbols indicate tone quality or playing style while colors, shading, cross-hatching and graphical texturing are applied to the note symbols in order to specify sound intensity. Connecting lines may be used to indicate groupings of notes.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,987,220 issued to Holcombe is directed to a graphic color music notation for students with distinct colors assigned to the 12 notes within a given octave. The notation system is based on seven spaces for the notes of the C major scale with the remaining notes of the 12 tone scale overlapping these spaces. The notes are shown in different shapes that are proportional to the duration for which they should be played with aides placed above and below the staff to indicate hand and finger movements. Notes that are to be played by the left hand are represented by a different shape than the shape used to represent notes to be played by the right hand. Representation of meter and durations is based on the proportional representation of the start time and relative duration for each note. The actual width of specific values such as a quarter note will vary from piece to piece in order to make the shortest notes clearly visible. Various aides of different shapes are used to indicate hand position and hand movement and are placed above the staff for the right hand and below the staff for the left hand. Numbers within a particular figure indicate the finger to be used while the color indicates the note to be played. Other traditional markings to indicate tempo or dynamics may also be utilized.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,574,238 issued to Mencher is directed to a system for musical notation for keyboard instruments. The system provides for the designation of the octaves by individual sets of lines with a color to match the color of tags of the corresponding keys within the octave on a piano keyboard. The black keys of each octave are tagged in a different color so that the artist may more easily recognize the keys of the piano to be utilized. The music is read from the top of the page to the bottom with notes to be played concurrently marked on the same horizontal line.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2008/0295670 published for Egan is directed to the Morpheus music notation devices and system. Technical and mechanical devices are utilized to simplify music notation to facilitate the learning and teaching of playing various musical instruments. The Morpheus system assigns a number to each key of the piano keyboard. The backbone of the Morpheus system is referred to as the finger ring configuration with each finger of the left hand assigned an alpha character with the right hand designated with distinctive and following alpha characters as well. These in turn correspond to the numeric value of individual piano keys in a classical piano layout.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,841,192 issued to Leonard is directed to a cord transposing and fingering dial. The device comprises a pair of coaxially mounted dials on a panel with one dial being smaller than the other in order to expose a peripheral portion so that proper positioning of one dial versus the other in order to display the notes required to achieve a particularly desired chord. This patent is provided in that your disclosure material indicated a chord finding wheel device that identifies the fingering for all chords and all keys.
While other variations exist, the above-described designs for musical notation systems are typical of those encountered in the prior art. It is an objective of the present invention to provide for a system of musical notation that permits identification of each tone to be played through a single, easily identified character. It is a further objective to provide such identification without reference to positional location of the character, as with conventional musical notation. It is a still further objective of the invention to provide for identification of half-tones through unique, consistent characters. It is yet a further objective to identify the timing and duration of tones through a positioning grid, illustrating the relative relationship of tones to each other without using different symbols (half notes, eight notes, etc.) for the same tone. It is still another objective to differentiate those tones played with the left hand from those played with the right hand through colored or graphical features. It is yet another objective to provide arrows or other markings to indicate notes to be sustained. It is still another objective to use special markings to indicate the end point for sustained notes. It is a further objective to use italic or other special typefaces to indicate arpeggios. It is still a further objective to use colored numbers to indicate timing intervals. It is yet a further objective to provide a simulated piano keyboard along with the musical notation to assist in fingering. It is another objective of the invention to provide keyboard note indicators to be mounted above the keyboard to assist in determining fingering. Finally, it is an objective of the invention to provide a simplified means for determining chord fingering and permitting the musician to explore chord inversions.
While some of the objectives of the present invention are disclosed in the prior art, none of the inventions found include all of the requirements identified.